Punishing the Innocent

Following the recent massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary, there is much debate over gun control. Obviously gun violence is out of hand in the USA. And President Obama’s views on this debate is to simply make more laws, but I don’t believe he realizes this is what got us in this whole mess in the first place.

As spoken from the words of a gangbanger on the television show Penn & Teller, “Gun laws are a joke.” I’m not wasting any time here, but on that show, a gang member for life admitted that gun laws are useless. They do nothing to stop criminals because criminals are going to find ways. Sure, certain island nations like Japan were able to successfully stop the importation of guns to private citizens, but we’re not Japan. We have a relatively weak Canadian border to the north and an ineffective Mexican border to the south. The Mexican cartel will get guns, including assault rifles with large-capacity magazines, into the United States through one border or the other. Terrorists will get those guns into the country the same way. The point is, I think the government is attempting to do the impossible.

They think that so much of this violence could be prevented if “We didn’t have these assault rifles.” But there are 7 million registered and only 7 mass shootings in the past year. Yes, that is a frighteningly high number, but by making assault rifles harder to get, or worse, illegal, then you’re preventing the good guys from getting the guns, while the bad guys who don’t care will get them either way.

Now let’s look at where all these mass shootings have been happening, shall we? A movie theater, a school, a shopping mall, all places that are legally defined as “No Gun Zones.” Basically, that means that if a good guy brings a gun onto the area, then he gets into a lot of trouble. But that essentially means the bad guy has a free pass to do whatever he wants until the police arrive.

Here’s something worth knowing; there are 20,000 plus gun laws in effect today. Why do we need more? Why do we need even more laws that won’t wind up being enforced anyways? It is a waste of time and money to simply write laws down that aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on?

If you want to stop this outrageous violence, you don’t blame the people who didn’t do it. You don’t blame the innocent. If we are going to be doing anything, add mental health checks to the requirements to get a gun and nothing more. There are too many people with serious mental health issues that can get their guns legally. Don’t punish the guns, punish the user.

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